


i feel like I can't breathe, i feel like i can't sleep (how did i not see?)

by waylaidepicurean



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Character Death In Dream, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21792067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waylaidepicurean/pseuds/waylaidepicurean
Summary: Cheryl's guilt is eating them alive.
Relationships: Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz
Comments: 23
Kudos: 96





	1. i'm unwell

There is something about Toni in white. It feels like a revelation - a reveal. Like how she's supposed to be, how she _truly is_. And the way she looks at her - nervous, with her hip cocked and arms stiff at her sides - fills Cheryl with a soft, warm tenderness. She can do nothing but smile full of soppy adoration at her dear, brave little soldier, lost and vulnerable without her leather armor. "Come here, ma petite colombe," she coos, and the furrow in Toni's brow smooths. It takes a stride and a half for her to close the gap between them, tucking herself into the safety of her lover's open arms, and Cheryl loves her so much her heart might break from it.

Toni came here for her. ( _She wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you.)_

She holds her close, pressing her cheek hard to the top of Toni's head. "Thank you for trusting me, my walking heart," she whispers, crossing her arms tighter around Toni's back and gripping at her elbows against the nervous tension in her girlfriend's body. "Don't be afraid. It's scary, in the moment. But I'm right here. I won't let anything hurt you. I promise."

Toni leans back, enough to look Cheryl in the eyes, unblinking as her gaze darts across her face - searching for something. Cheryl tries to show her everything, how good she feels. How free now. It makes her feel almost giddy, to be so close to freeing Toni in the same way. And then Toni looks away. Down. Down, to their feet, where the shiny steel trough sits, filled with clean, cool water. She sighs, and her sweet breaths raise her ribs where they fit against each other, and Cheryl breaths with her. Toni nods, and Cheryl kisses the crown of her precious head.

"It's worth it, TT. You'll see. It washes away the stress, the darkness. You'll feel clean, like you've never felt before." She wants that for Toni. So, so much. Toni deserves to live a life without the weight of her past pulling her down. No dead family, no abusive relatives, no poverty and crime and desperation strangling her future before she even gets a chance to see it. They can start fresh, together.

Toni's mouth opens and closes but nothing comes out, and there's fear written in the familiar lines of her visage. Cheryl's heart aches at the sight. "I know you're nervous. I was too. Trust me, my love." She begs silently - with her touch on the edges of Toni's tight jaw and the look of open reverence in her eyes - for her to believe.

And then she's kneeling at the trough, watching Toni settle with her legs stretched in front of her in the confined space. (For a fraction of a second, like the dark flicker of a strobe light, she sees lacquered mahogany and red silk.)

Toni crosses her arms across her chest. (A flicker. A box. A body. Posed.)

Toni doesn't blink, doesn't look away. (A flicker. A body. A body.)

She cups the back of Toni's head and presses her other hand over her lover's crossed wrists, scarlet coffin nails stark against the virginal white of Toni's shirt. She presses, gently, inexorably, guiding Toni back and into the water. All the way down, until her lover's back is flush against the bottom and her own pale arm is submerged halfway to her elbow.

She's only seen one other baptism, besides her own. The woman struggled. Panicked. Evelyn said she was clinging to her burdens, refusing to accept her destiny. That she couldn't emerge until she accepted her calling. Cheryl prays, prays like she's never done before, that Toni will be brave.

Toni doesn't blink. Doesn't look away. A scant few bubbles escape to the surface from her clothes and her loose hair. (Oh, god.)

Cheryl leans over, bracing herself with her free hand against the edge of the trough. She holds her lover's gaze. She holds her breath. She counts the beat of her own pulse behind her eyes, louder and louder as the seconds tick by. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. She feels dizzy. Sick.

_(you are)_

It's too long.

Toni doesn't blink. Doesn't look away. Doesn't do anything at all but watch. Wait. Trust.

She's going to be sick. Her body recoils but she's cut short by a hand gripping hers. It forces her nails to dig into the body beneath her, and she struggles reflexively. She breaks away from Toni's gaze, twisting to face Evelyn, almost cheek to cheek from where she stands behind her, over her, pressing their bodies down on Toni's chest. She swings her other elbow towards the woman and struggles, her own chest tight. "She can't breath!"

_She's not done, yet._

Not Evelyn. She turns to the voice and it's Edgar, breathing into her ear, his hand covering hers over the yield of Toni's ribcage. "Let her up!" She grabs at his arm, digging her nails in and ripping viciously.

_You did this to her. You don't get to back out now, Cheryl._

She doesn't need to look to recognize the sibilant tongue in her other ear. A hand runs down her arm, blunt crimson nails dragging over her skin until it crawls and she feels the kind of ill you can't vomit out. Her mother grasps her forearm with a grip like a bear trap, her other hand clamped on the back of her neck, forcing her head close to the water. Cheryl takes a deep breath, expecting to be held under, but her mother stops and _laughs_ with dark mirth. She's trapped, pinned, her face hovering inches away from Toni. (from her sin, like a dog punished for its nature by having its face rubbed in it)

Toni doesn't blink. Doesn't look away. She folds her hands over Cheryl's above her heart. (her whole heart)

Cheryl struggles between the forces restraining her (is it one hand? A dozen?). There is no advance, no retreat. She bends her fingers back, trying to pull away completely; sobbing, begging.

"TT, please!" Do something. Do anything. Help me. Help you. Save yourself from _you_ (us) _(you)_.

Toni doesn't blink, doesn't look away. Doesn't panic. Her hair waves so delicately in the current Cheryl creates with her struggle. "Please! TT!"

She sobs, ugly and painful and deep, until bile rises in her throat and stings behind her nose and her eyes water from it. She closes her eyes _(craven creature)_. The wind whips up and her arm feels numb to her elbow and her stomach turns even before she opens them again.

Freezing cold against her front and wind lashing at her back. Her body, her hand, moves faster than her mind can truly process as she makes a fist, nails ripping at Toni's skintight top for purchase before Sweetwater River's currents can whisk her away. The ice is like glass - terrifying, unnatural. Toni's hair whips in the water, her hands floating limp above her head. Her own beautiful Ophelia, insensate. (god, no)

Toni doesn't blink, she doesn't look away, she doesn't-

Cheryl screams. She pulls, throws her own weight back with a feral howl of desperation until it feels like the muscles in her shoulder will tear themselves asunder. Her arm, trapped in the ice, doesn't move at all, though her bonds should melt before the burning terror her skin is consumed by. She slams her free fist at her wrist, trying to break through the weakest ice she can find. She slaps her palm over the ice above Toni's face, begging, begging. "Please! Please! Please! Toni! Please!" Every plea, every prayer, she punctuates with a kick with her heels, a slam of her elbow into the pellucid surface below her. Her knuckles split and bleed and smear crimson over the ice and every strike leaves her more exhausted than the last.

_We'll never leave you, now._

There's a jerk from below the water and Cheryl wails, unable to adjust her tenuous grip on her lover with the force of the river fighting against her and her fingers dead and stiff from cold.

Toni doesn't blink, doesn't look away, _doesn't see-_

Cheryl can't stop screaming, chokes on them, feels Toni's body be pulled away, she sees - she sees… (churned silt and slush and blood _our blood_ pallid and waterlogged and _he was supposed to come back_ )

She gasps, snaps awake; her body locked stiff and paralyzed for one long, agonizing moment. Dark. Warm. Silk. Silence. Stale. Senses return slowly, piecemeal. A hand - a finger - twitches just slightly at her wrist and she jerks away, twisting her head to her right.

Toni. Asleep - snoring lightly, mouth open and drooling into her own orchid hair spread across the pillow.

A shuddering breath triggers something in her gut. She gags, heaves, swallows it back down before she wakes up Toni. The involuntary reaction is insult heaped on top of injury, so she lays still - or at least as still as she can while her stomach roils at the acid on her tongue and her limbs tremble after her escape from a dull new hell - and counts the breaths from beside her. It's a soothing metronome, those deep, even exhalations.

She longs to reach out, to take Toni in her arms and hold her close and probably cry and snot all over her while her sweet girl strokes her hair; craves to cleave and cling until her careful, doting lover smooths away all the jagged edges of her night terror. With a touch, a word, she could wake Toni up, could have the sweetest of nothings whispered into her hair and the gentlest of kisses pressed to her damp brow.

But she won't touch her. She won't speak. _(You did this to her.)_

Before long she finds herself shivering, sweat on her skin and the sheets leaving her cold even in the warm room, with Toni's warm body so close. Her heart throbs, cries out to curl close and be healed by the softness that only its match can provide, but Cheryl denies it. Tells herself that Toni shouldn't have to forsake sleep just because her own wicked mind won't let her have any. It hurts (aches, groans, breaks) and it feels like penance.

She slowly draws herself upright, easing her legs from under the silk sheets and sliding her bare feet into her embroidered slippers. Her mind feels at odds, all at once a frightened child, desperate for comfort, and the scornful mother waiting for it to cry itself to sleep. But Mother is right, for once, she feels. She needs to learn to soothe herself. She can't expect Toni to be her girlfriend and mother, both.

Toni does so very much already.

She presses a kiss to her index and middle fingers, tapping them gently to her lover's flannel-covered shoulder - the only concession she allows herself.

Her bones ache when she stands but she stretches onto her tiptoes, sneaking past her vanity and grabbing her silk robe as she passes. She waits to put it on until she's outside the bedroom, closing the door gently behind her.

Down the stairs, clutching the banister as she forces herself to carefully creep down on the edge to keep the steps from creaking, she goes directly to Nana Rose's room. It smells of powder and spoiled perfume and the comforting scent of the mothballed clothes Nana doesn't wear but refuses to get rid of. There are a pair of outfits laid out on her dresser, and the familiar morbidity of Nana's attempts to select the perfect burial attire is almost welcome, this night.

She waits in the doorway until she sees Nana Rose's fragile bird cage chest rise and fall in quarter time to the sporadic whistling coming from her nose and there's a welling fondness for the old woman as her nasally wheezes stir the bright shock of red hair dangling down from atop the rest of her bone white locks. It reminds her of ribbon peppermints and Toni's patient smile as she assured Nana that she was quite competent at coloring hair, thank you very much. Nana Rose had smiled at her in a way that happened so rarely anymore - with a sense of cognizance - as they waited for the dye to set, petting Toni's upper arm. "You're a good one," she'd said. Neither girl had wanted to ask a good one of _what_. Knowing the Blossom clan, it was probably casually racist at best, virulently racist following closely behind. She'd simply smiled at Toni behind Nana's back, pressing the curled pointer and thumbs of each of her hands together to form a heart over her right breast and Toni had smiled back, beatific.

(aches, groans, breaks)

Her next stop is the bathroom adjacent the nursery down the hall. She isn't sure what time it is, exactly, but she knows she isn't going back to sleep tonight. So she performs her morning ablutions: washing her face, brushing her teeth, applying salves and creams. Some (Toni) may call her sprawling product collection excessive ("This is literally the bougiest thing I have ever seen in my entire life."), and yet. She won't turn into her mother; hair thin and dull, face made of leather and botulism, heart made of stone. She refuses.

_(Our blood.)_

She won't.

Her hands rub against each other, massaging in her lotion as she creeps into the nursery proper. Juniper is already awake, making curious chirping noises from her cot closest to the door. Cheryl guesses it's probably about 3 in the morning, maybe 4, if June isn't fussing about a wet diaper. She leans over Juniper's crib to check on her, and realizes too late that it's probably a mistake when her niece clambers gracelessly to her feet, holding on to the glossy cherry wood drop gate and smiling with a wet streak on her cheek. It makes Cheryl sigh, utterly besotted with another tiny drooler. She leans her cheek against the railing, smiling at Juniper and reaching behind her to pet her massive, fuzzy head. Her hair is coming in, slowly, and like Dagwood (god, she hates that name, but she'll slit her own throat before she gives her mother the satisfaction of having her way) it's a pale, strawberry blonde. She hopes that it darkens, selfishly. (her heart aches, groans, strains at the seams from all the hopes she keeps inside for her brother's children) (their babies)

She wants to pick her up, hold her in her arms and press her face into Juniper's and just breath in her cloying baby smell: spilled formula and saliva and the special detergent they use after Toni figured out why the twins kept breaking out into rashes. But it's too late, or early, and she knows it will just wake her up further.

Sweet Juniper, so clever and patient, realizes quickly that this is a social call as her auntie runs her nails delicately over the back of her onesie instead of lifting her out of her crib. It's still dark out, and her brother sleeps peacefully in his cot, so she plops down on her fat little bottom and flops backwards. Cheryl can barely stand to look at her without bursting into tears as she kicks her chubby little legs; has never seen anything so sweet as how she chews on her chubby little hand as Cheryl strokes over her chubby little belly.

"Are you bored of me already, sweetness? I know I'm only your second favorite auntie, but you could fake a little enthusiasm," she whisper-croons, teasing. "Do you miss Aunt TT, too?"

She doesn't know if Juniper is just reacting to her voice or if she actually understands, if she recognizes the name. She smiles like she does, gnawing her wet fist and burbling. Toni would know for sure. She keeps such careful track of the milestones the twins should be meeting. "She's the best Auntie, isn't she?"

They watch each other; Juniper curious and drowsy, Cheryl with an expanding sense of calm. She wants to keep talking about Toni - it fills her with such a sense of comfort - but she knows it's selfish. The babies are so little and they need their routine. She shouldn't be disturbing it. But she finds it impossible to leave, not when she can gaze at Juniper's face and see so many familiar features. So she stays, she's not sure how long. Long enough that pale eyes are lost behind fine eyelashes and a tiny mouth goes slack. Long enough to watch the moon creep across Dagwood's cot where he sleeps much heavier than his sister, bundled up in a warm onesie that covers his tiny feet and his tiny hands and his tiny, razor sharp fingernails that he is forever cutting himself on.

She slips out once more, leaving another room of soft, slumbering bodies behind. Her mind begs for respite but her body can't settle, constantly feeling at odds with the house around her. Like the house beats with a staccato that's just out of time with her own heartbeat, throwing her off and keeping her restless. Wandering like a ghost in her own home.

There's a candelabra and a box of matches by the door and she strikes one in a worn motion. Follows the stairs down, trails the light held before her like Gretel at Hansel's back, feeling for all the world as if something nips at her heels as she makes her way to the gate. She pulls the key from her bra, where she's begun to keep it for safety. The tumbler in the lock sounds too loud.

And there he sits, waiting still, in the dark chapel made darker still with the blackout curtains Toni insisted be installed. There is still dust - on the floor, the windowsill, the chair underneath - that Toni said she'd clean up after her drillwork but never did, doing her job and bolting upstairs as soon as she could. Cheryl sighs as she collapses into the dirty chair and her breath billows before her.

They sit in silence. She rests her arm on the chair, temple to palm. Her mind still whirs with the fading memories of her nocturnal horror, the details evanescing until what remains is just a dark stain she fears she'll never be able to remove. A stain she's too afraid to even approach for fear of recognizing something.

"Gate of horn or gate of ivory, dear brother?"

He says nothing. He was always cleverer than her, in that way. Better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. She could never resist, though.

Opening her mouth.

Removing all doubt.

"Father always said that when we were formed you gathered all the wits to yourself and left the beauty for me. I wonder what that would have left Julian. I hate to think I would have had to share."

She hates that her mouth can't fix itself to say pleasant things tonight. At least for herself. The lingering tendrils of her dream prod her, try to drag her back into it, but she knows that it was all pain and woes and she tries her hardest to brush them away. The way her tongue cuts at her own self unbidden feels like punishment for a deed she can't remember doing. The good twin, accused of her flesh's crime. Or maybe she's the evil triplet. She is the last one standing, after all. The family curse, come to bloom. From the blood. ( _our blood_ )

She never asked for this.

"I didn't. I never wanted anyone to be hurt."

Jason listens. It feels like he sops up the bile that drips off her tongue, locks it away inside himself and away from her. She loves him so.

But she's lying.

"I did want to hurt him. And her. She hurt him before I could. It's one of the few times she's ever done right by us."

She's so tired. Tired of being hurt, of being used. Tired of blood, of her blood, all of them trying to gorge themselves on what remains. A cycle of cannibalism, eating their own, eating their weak. Coveting a legacy that's foul at its very roots, steeped in the blood of their own children - their own, and so, so many others.

"I can see why you left, now. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. To throw it all away for love..."

Could she be so brave? To sacrifice birthright and heritage, hearth and home - to relinquish the chance to prove that she deserves the name she was born into?

(She thinks she could be brave. She's tasted sweeter names on her tongue.)

She thinks of Toni and suddenly her skin feels tight from the cold. "Sweet dreams, JJ. Or good morning. I think it's time for me to retire."

Body stiff, she creaks her way up the stairs at a pace even Nana could match. Her slippers whisper across the floor as she shuffles through the corridors until she pauses at her bedroom. Toni's bedroom. Their bedroom. It's quiet, so she opens the door as slowly as she can. Her lover is still in bed, asleep, turned to the moonlight that caresses her skin like Cheryl herself longs to, blankets pulled up to her chin. With all the care of a thief in the night, she slides a knee onto the bed, applying her weight slowly so as not to disturb the quiet figure on the other side.

A figure that is too quiet. Toni's breaths are even, but… "TT?"

Nothing. But Cheryl knows she's not asleep, has listened to her lover's slumbering noises so often they sound like a favorite song. "Did I wake you, my love?" But no, it's not that, even as she says the words. If she'd woken her up, Toni wouldn't pretend otherwise. Would have answered her. She leans over, one leg stretched to the ground, one hand reaching to gently rest on the curve of her lover's waist over the blanket.

Toni doesn't speak, merely clasps her hand clumsily through the blanket with her own in a silent plea. It's a request she doesn't hesitate to fill, kicking off her slippers and throwing her robe on top of them so she can slip under the blankets and wrap herself around the person she's longed for the most this night. Toni shivers, and Cheryl trembles as her body leeches heat and she's finally something approaching warm. "I'm sorry, sweetest. My feet must be like ice."

Toni stays silent, just pushes and pulls at her until her arms wrap around her waist and their hips and thighs and knees align. She would think her sweet girl is just sleepy, seeking cuddles before slipping back into dream, and yet…

She listens, in the silence. Feels Toni's ribs shift with every expansion of her lungs. Can hear tiny, soft huffs as she exhales through her mouth. When she shifts, pulling her arm from under Toni just enough so that she can prop herself onto her elbow and peer over her shoulder, to see her face, her girlfriend grabs her wrist in a vice grip, pulling it around her waist again and pinning it there. Hiding.

"What's wrong? Why are you crying?"

Because that's what it is. She's done this trick before herself - avoiding the telltale sniffles by breathing through her mouth until she was safe. Alone.

Toni sniffles hard, coughing a little bit to clear her throat. "It's nothing, babe. I think I'm PMS'ing. I missed you when I woke up."

It's not a good lie. For many reasons, but most glaringly because Toni stores her birth control on their bathroom sink and she's halfway through the second week. Cheryl doesn't call her out, instead pressing her lips to the nape of her lover's neck. Gently, she kisses her again, behind her ear, before settling in as close as possible. "I love you, ma seule." Toni makes a noise in response.

Cheryl buries her face into the thick hair at the back of Toni's head, curls her arms all the way round until she grips her own wrist against Toni's belly, throws her leg over Toni's at the knee so she can press her feet against hers. It feels like all she can do now. Be there for her, like Toni says she wasn't when she awoke. Be everywhere for her, now.

It's not what's real, but...

(She wants to know, wants to fix it, wants to make everything perfect for this perfect girl.)

She's terrified to know.

( _Coward._ )

She doesn't press.

Toni breathes, and Cheryl counts each one.

"Where were you?" The question is wet, phlegmy. Cheryl holds tighter.

The ice feels thin.

"I couldn't sleep. I checked on Nana and the twins."

A breath. A breath. A breath. A sucking, shuddering inhalation. "Is that it?"

A crack.

She could lie. She could tell a beautiful lie.

"I stopped in the chapel. Just for a little."

An exhale, long and slow and she feels Toni's lungs deflate and she aches.

"I love you." It sounds like drowning.

"I adore you, my TT."

She counts breaths until the sunrise, and they feel like grains in an hourglass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this like three episodes ago and I'm still sad about how much these poor kids are suffering but the show keeps wasting time on Hiram and trying to convince us that Jughead is dead.


	2. unzip your skin and let me have a see

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toni's a liar. She's had a lot of practice.

“Antoinette Topaz?”

She doesn’t want to be here. She _really_ doesn’t want to be here. But Toni has always felt herself a pragmatist. If she puts this off, Mr. Honey will just keep scheduling new appointments. If she tells him she’s not interested, it draws unwanted attention.

She knows how this all works by now.

“Antoinette?”

The guidance counselor looks at her, one eyebrow raised high in question.

“Yes.” She doesn’t correct her. They aren’t friends. 

“Would you like a drink? Or something to snack on?” 

They aren’t friends.

Toni shakes her head, polite. “No, but I would like to thank you.”

Mrs. Burble inclines her head but says nothing, inviting Toni to continue. She does, following the script set before her for now. “For what you did for Cheryl. Blossom. That test. It’s bullshit, but it made her feel better.”

She gives her that - gives Burble enough to be considered “engaging” with the counsellor without revealing anything she didn’t already know, gives her this bit of honesty for how she’s helped her girlfriend. 

And she is thankful. Truly. Seeing Cheryl start crawling out from under the learned helplessness of her family’s manipulation - it’s cliche, but she feels like it lifted a massive weight off of her own shoulders, too.

Burble considers her, that same eyebrow still raised. “Why do you believe the test is ‘bullshit’?”

She wants to scoff. She doesn’t. She’s used to being underestimated. “A rare DNA test using a saliva sample with a twelve hour turn-around?”

The counselor smiles, just slightly, just at the corner of her mouth. Toni watches as she flips open the file on her lap, tries not to cross her arms defensively across her chest. “You’re a very smart girl, Antoinette. Are you and Cheryl close?”

“Extremely.” She bites her tongue, angry at herself for how easily it slips out. She should know how this works! Answer the question and no more. She knows how this works.

The older woman nods, watching her in that examining way that makes Toni want to fight. “You must be, for her to share her medical information with you. Do you have other friends?”

There’s an angle. Toni doesn’t know what it is, but she knows she’s being herded. “Yes. I made a lot of friends when I transferred here.” Answer, and no more. Talk enough to appear engaged. It’s a good answer. Solid, verifiable, makes her seem well-adjusted.

“Your other friends… are they also Poison members?”

A loaded question, but it’s easier to answer. Being in a gang isn’t illegal, doing gang shit is. She can admit to the former without implicating herself in the latter. “Some of them.”

“How often do you hang out with your other friends?” Burble asks it casually, her hand running down the page in the file that she’s skimming, flattening it.

“Probably not often enough. I keep busy. I have a lot of extracurriculars, it eats into my free time.” Her tone is equally casual, her body settling into the couch. Non-confrontational, verifiable. She knows how this works.

Burble nods, again, and it drives Toni up the wall. This forced neutrality in tone, action, presentation. It’s a fakeness, an insincerity that makes her want to flip the low table between them just to force a real reaction from the older woman.

“How is your home life? Also busy?” And there it is. The question she’s been waiting for. One she’s familiar with.

She shrugs, affecting a boredom she doesn’t feel. “It’s ok. My uncle stays out late for work most nights so I don’t get to see him a lot. It took us awhile to replace the hot water tank, so I had to shower at school for a few days. Other than that, it’s fine.” Lies, but not pretty ones. Pretty ones would be too obvious. She knows her name is on the file in Mrs. Burble’s lap, and she knows that it says her address is a trailer on the Southside. There are expectations; one working guardian and running water exceeds them as far as her prior social workers have been concerned. Not that she knows if her uncle is actually working. If he is, it won’t be anything legit.

“So you and your uncle managed to avoid having your home damaged too much in the riot?”

The question gets her back up. It’s a landmine question. It’s a question you ask when you already know the answer. She was tied up during riot night - 100% literally - but she was in it. She knows her uncle’s trailer made it through mostly intact - they broke the doorknob and all the windows, and she bets it’s all duct tape and trashbags even now - but he’d locked her out days before that. She was in a tent with a rotation of roommates until she moved in with Cheryl. She’s not even fucking sure her uncle hasn’t up and moved entirely - it’s not like she wastes time checking in on him when she goes to see how her grandpa’s doing.

“We got lucky,” she settles on. She doesn’t like it. It makes her uncomfortable to lie about a question she doesn’t know the real answer to.

The older woman nods, accepting the answer. It doesn’t set her at ease at all. 

“Do you feel safe at home?” 

Toni is really beginning to hate that specific eyebrow - the one Burble uses to convey a sense of genuine interest. Her irritation comes out before she can stop herself - her jaw clenches, her tongue runs over her teeth, under her lips. She schools it back off, training her face into that same fucking neutral mask.

“Absolutely.”

The counsellor waits, patient, subtly encouraging. But this is a familiar trick: keep you talking without direction so you say things that you don’t mean to. Incriminating yourself, others. It makes anger simmer in Toni’s chest. She gives her nothing.

The bell rings for class transitions. It’s her free period. She wishes she was anywhere but here.

Burble inclines her head, every movement soft and slow and designed to make her seem unthreatening. Trustworthy. The woman smiles, soft with no teeth, and leans in to rest her elbows on her knees, hands folded together, like she’s sharing a secret with Toni. “How long have you been living at Thistlehouse,” she asks, eyes gentle and prying.

Toni hasn’t wanted to bite anyone in a non-sexual manner since she was, like, six, but she really wants to bite this woman. On her face. She hates that this woman knows anything about her, about her private life and her private business, that she feels like she has any right to know any of that. This woman has no right.

Like, god, she knows it hasn’t exactly been a _secret_ but if she’d known she was going to have so many fucking _roommates_ she probably would have kept it more hush. At the time she just figured if she got caught out she’d get another case worker who she’d ignore, just like she ignored all the other ones who were overworked and underpaid and would maybe do a home visit just to make sure she wasn’t getting pimped out or something, and then just coast until her birthday when the system would wipe its hands of her until the next time she got arrested. But now she just can’t fucking _afford_ the scrutiny. Not with Nana, and the twins, and Cheryl and Bedford and fucking Jason, fuck.

There’s nothing safe for her to say, nothing she can trade on. But that’s never stopped her from bullshitting before. “I’m not living there. Cheryl’s my friend so I sleep over a lot. She can actually cook so it’s awesome.” She tries to say it like it’s a joke, wraps it in an ugly truth - acknowledges her home life isn’t amazing, plays it down. Her stomach is coiling.

“Do you feel safe there?” It’s not really an unexpected question but it raises her hackles all the same.

“ _Absolutely._ ” 

Burble nods, like she’s listening, but continues on and makes it clear she isn’t. “Physical abuse isn’t the only marker of an unsafe home. Emotional abuse can make you anxious and uncomfortable in a place you should feel safe.”

Toni knows from emotional abuse. Emotional abuse is having the person who is supposed to take care of you push you bodily from your home and lock the door behind you until you “straighten out”. It’s sleeping with your wallet in your bra and your keys in your fist under the pillow. It’s someone telling you they love you and want to make you well while they poison you with drugs and plot to carve your body into pieces for resale. It’s a woman pressing the point of her knife to your throat and telling you that you’re lucky that there’s someone else she wants to gut more than you. It’s cops taunting you, calling you “honey” from the other side of the cell door while you wait out a 24-hour hold. 

It’s being fourteen and hearing the people you trust telling you to strip to your underwear and climb onstage.

“She isn’t abusing me,” she all but snarls, and Mrs. Burble reacts by placatingly raising her hands, showing her empty palms.

“I never said she-”

Toni snaps. It comes on like she just got jumped by her feelings in a back alley, completely sudden and entirely overwhelming. “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid! You asked me if I was living with Cheryl, you asked me if I felt safe, you asked me about abuse - she doesn’t abuse me, she would _never._ Being hurt by someone isn’t the same as being abused by them. I _know_ the difference.”

“I’m sorry that I made you feel stupid, that wasn’t my intention.”

Her face feels like it’s on fire. When she moves, she feels sweat soaking her shirt at the small of her back. She stands abruptly. “We’re done. I’m not talking about Cheryl anymore.”

It takes a single step before Burble is reacting, and it’s so sudden and unexpected that it makes Toni jump back when the woman gets to her feet in mirror, the folder on her lap landing on the floor with a slap. “We are not talking about Cheryl, Antoinette, we are talking about _you_. This is about you, and your safety.”

The way her teeth come out is out of her control - everything suddenly feels out of her control, really. She doesn’t know if she even wants it back, she’s so _angry_. “I take care of myself,” she growls.

The other woman stoops to scoop up her paperwork - the file held together with thin aluminum tines and staples - and then sits back in her chair, staring at Toni with a hard look until she does the same on the arm of the couch, ready to bolt. Burble takes a moment to straighten her file and Toni knows she’s waiting for her to unclench. It’s not going to happen.

How dare she. _How dare she_. An absolute stranger, casting judgement from above on things she can’t possibly relate to. 

Mrs. Burble parts her lips, just slightly. Stops, tries again more firmly after her false start. “You’ve taken on a lot of responsibilities. A very intense relationship, three dependents, including two small children. It is a lot. And I have no doubt that you are very capable. But I question if taking on those responsibilities is good _for you_ , specifically.”

It’s on the tip of her tongue. ‘Cheryl _needs_ me,’ she thinks, _knows_ . It’s too much, way too much - it’s an admission. The kind of slip that leads to her girlfriend locked in a small room, soaking in sedatives and lithium. It would fucking _break_ her. 

And that’s the whole fucking problem. Nana and the babies? That’s a-fucking-lot, but it’s easy. 

It's _Cheryl_ . It’s Cheryl that she has no idea what to do with, and that’s the god damn trip. She’s running fucking _triage_ because Cheryl needs help that Toni is painfully aware she simply isn’t capable of providing and she can’t get her any help because of the fact that she needs it _so, so badly_ . Because, god, what if they put her in a hold? Voluntary or involuntary, it would ruin _everything_.

Regardless of how long she’s been on her own, as far as the law is concerned she’s a child. She’s not emancipated, she’s seventeen. If Cheryl is in a psychiatric hold, people are going to be looking at her living situation - _their_ living situation. Nobody’s going to let a juvenile gang member be the sole caretaker of two toddlers and a wealthy dowager. And the Blossoms will descend like locusts at the perception of weakness, devouring Cheryl’s portion of the business, her inheiritance, and Nana Rose’s too with no one to stop them, and then who’s going to pay for the fucking treatment? Toni, on her part-time salary working at Veronica’s? 

It would be un-fucking-tenable, and that thought chews up her gut at night until she feels like the heartburn will turn her inside out.

It eats her alive and she feels so trapped and she can’t tell _anyone_. Tears burn in her eyes and she grinds her palms into them, trying to turn it into a real pain, a physical pain, tries to turn it back into anger, to anything other than this pathetic tacit confession, this helplessness.

“You’re a brilliant girl, you’re incredibly resilient, all of this is obvious from talking to you and reading your file. And I can see that you’re loyal. To a fault, Antoinette. You can not let yourself burn to keep others warm.” Burble doesn’t acknowledge her tears or her soft, choked off sobs hidden behind her hands and Toni is 99% thankful for it and 100% smothering that traitorous 1% that wants her to see them and _help her_.

It all just sits on the tip of her tongue, all the things she wants someone else to hear. _I’m so lost._ The impulsiveness that drew her to Cheryl’s fiery personality is now a raging inferno and she can’t _stop it_ . Because it’s the only thing that’s keeping Cheryl from freezing. Having Jason’s corpse around isn’t healthy, but neither was the Farm funneling homebrew psychotropics down her throat and using his corpse as a puppet to manipulate her, and seeing how much comfort it brings her makes Toni feel like an absolute monster for being freaked out by it and it’s _so absolutely fucked_ . Cheryl is holding it together with maple red lipstick and her own _cuckoo bananas_ coping mechanisms and Toni finds herself just going along with it all because she’s terrified that any pushback is going to shatter Cheryl to pieces that they’ll never be able to put back together and she’s just _losing_ herself in the farce.

She doesn’t know what she’ll do anymore, if it all goes up in flames. (Hock some Blossom heirlooms, grab the twins and go to Canada - find some of Gladys’ people and see if they’ll give her a job. Lay down and die, maybe.)

She swallows it all back down, thick and sticky like syrup. The risk is too much. Triage - she’s still walking wounded, there are others in the queue before her. She’ll deal. 

She breaths. She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes until she forces back the tides and fireworks appear. She sniffles and clears her throat and then she’s done.

“Nothing’s going on at home.” Burble opens her mouth to argue but Toni tramples over her, leaning down to grab her bag and slinging it over her shoulder. “I promise. I’m just stressed out about my college acceptance letter. Cheryl and I haven’t gotten them back yet and we’re trying to get into the same school. Thanks for the talk.”

“Antoinette.” She keeps going, boots hitting the ground in a beat that keeps her grounded, reminds her that she’s still moving. “ _Toni,_ ” Mrs. Burble repeats, turning in her chair as the younger girl walks away.

“I gotta go. I’ve got class.” Her hand is on the knob and she’s so close to gone, to closing this off behind her and focusing on the problems in front of her.

The counselor spits out her next words quickly, trying to catch her before she makes it out the door. “You said ‘being hurt by someone isn’t the same as being abused by them’. Explain the difference to me.”

_‘The difference is I love her,’_ is what almost trips off her tongue, but she knows that’s not enough. _‘She doesn’t know any better, we’re learning,’_ isn’t right either. _‘One day we’ll stop hurting each other,’_ gives her cold shivers. “Abuse is about making someone small so you feel bigger. But sometimes you make people feel small even when you don’t mean to, and it makes you feel small too. Sometimes you accidentally step on someone’s foot; that’s not the same as punching them.” 

It’s not right, it’s just a disassembling of a truth she knows intrinsically - Cheryl is hard to love because she wants it so very much and nobody has ever taught her how to do it, and sometimes she sees it slipping away and it makes her hold on like a drowning person, dragging them both down. It’s terrifying and overwhelming sometimes and Toni craves it like oxygen in her lungs as she clings to Cheryl in kind.

Mrs. Burble stands, crossing the room, and Toni presses herself against the wall next to the door. “It’s about patterns, Toni. Keep your eyes open,” she says, worn lines appearing in her chin and in parentheses around her mouth as she tries to catch the younger girl’s gaze. There’s just a glimpse, a startled glance, when the counsellor puts her hand over the one already on the door knob, turning it with her slowly.

“Yeah, ok,” she mumbles, slipping through the door like a cat before it’s more than barely open and then jerking it shut behind herself.

They stand on opposite sides of the closed door for a minute, unmoving. Toni doesn’t know what she’s waiting for. She doesn’t know what Burble’s waiting for. But then she hears heels making their way to her desk, the click and clack of her phone as she tells the office she’s ready for the next student. Toni moves then.

Sweet Pea comes out of the main office next, and she jumps a little to see him. It’s been awhile. He gives her his hard stare, but she doesn’t take it personally. That’s just his big, dumb face. She gives him a smile, or as close to one as she can manage, as he makes his big, dumb, tall person strides and gets to her side in two steps when it would have taken her, like, five.

“Just answer-” she starts, but he cuts her off.

“Answer the questions and nothing else. I know how this works by now, Tiny.” He sounds gruff, but he holds his fist out for her to graze her knuckles against. When she does, his hand twists quickly, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her into his chest hard. He gives her a brief, clumsy half-hug and a chaste kiss to her forehead before letting her go and throwing the door open so hard it bounces off the wall. Mrs. Burble sighs in exasperation and tells him to close it behind himself. Toni does it for him with a curl of her own lip at his smug look.

She pulls out her phone and sees two messages from Cheryl on her lock screen, but then Cheryl is there in person. Her girlfriend marches over from the office, her beauty queen smile on just for her, and god, it’s like she can breathe again.

“You look a fright, darling.” She can only shrug. She doesn’t have a lie ready, isn’t sure she even wants to lie. She just doesn’t want to talk about it just yet. Cheryl’s hands cup her jaw, delicate and devoted, and Toni is reminded all over again why she’ll walk through fire for this girl. Her lips purse and she turns to press them to her girlfriend’s upturned palms. Cheryl guides their lips together, then, in a delicate, closed-mouth kiss. “We have thirty minutes before last period. Would you like to go sit in the car until the bell?”

“That is exactly what I wanna do,” she sighs, though her words come out slightly muffled as Cheryl playfully squishes her cheeks. It draws out a smile that Cheryl returns tenfold. Her thumbs reach up to her cheeks, under her eyes, slowly, and Toni closes them as her girlfriend gently swipes away what is sure to be a mess of eyeliner and mascara. One hand disappears for a moment, only to return wet. “Ew,” she whines.

She can’t see Cheryl’s face, but she can feel the puff of her laughter against her skin. “This is the least objectionable fluid of mine that’s ever been on your face.”

It makes her laugh, and her chest loosens. “Untrue. Your spit is second on the fluid hierarchy. So far.”

“Ew.” Cheryl finishes her chore and Toni opens her eyes to see her giving her a smooth once over. “Presentable,” she decrees with a flourish, raising her arm to spin Toni clumsily in her heavy boots. Then, with an impish look, she presses her lips firmly to her cheek. “Perfect.” Her eyes twinkle with mischief and Toni finds herself falling again and again.

She knows there’s a lip print on her face but she can’t bring herself to wipe it away. Cheryl reaches up to do it for her but she pushes her hand down, gripping it in her own. A shy smile creeps over her girlfriend’s pale face and Toni grins back.

They make their way to the parking lot at a brisk pace, Cheryl swinging their clasped hands between them, and she’s grateful that her girlfriend cleaned up the evidence of her breakdown so she doesn’t feel like she has to hide her face as they walk by the few people sharing the halls with them during classes.

Outside the weather is bracing, just a few degrees above freezing. Cheryl’s car is right next to the entrance, which is not, like, ideal for them to cuddle in because anyone leaving or entering is going to walk right past them, but it doesn’t seem to phase her girlfriend at all. She leads Toni to the back, fishing her keys out of the bag slung on her left shoulder and unlocking the trunk with one dextrous hand. There’s a plush, maroon blanket folded there and she tugs it out. “Close please, TT.”

Toni slams it closed with her free hand, and Cheryl’s pretty mouth turns down in exaggerated distress. “Must you abuse my baby so, TT? Be gentle!”

“You love it,” she quips and Cheryl gasps, scandalized.

Her girlfriend drags her to the passenger side, which is unexpected. When Toni takes the keys from her and unlocks it, Cheryl takes the seat, and that is more unexpected. But then she turns to Toni with her cheerful smile and pats her lap invitingly and it’s exactly what she didn’t know she wanted. She clambers in, slinging her leg over Cheryl’s lap, and Cheryl pets over it fondly before she tucks Toni’s other leg safely out of the way of the door and closes it. The car is cold inside and her skirt has hiked up high around her thighs, but she barely has time to start shivering before Cheryl is slinging the blanket around her shoulders like a cape. The fabric feels good, but cold, though she knows it will warm up soon enough as Cheryl tucks it, swaddle-like, around their bodies.

Hands press against her spine and she slumps easily against her girlfriend’s chest, tucking her arms behind her back. For a minute she’s almost comfortable but then Cheryl is fidgeting and a cold breeze sneaks into their cocoon and the back of the seat drops, deeply, quickly, and she yelps as Cheryl giggles. “Whoops.” 

Insistent hands press against her again, brooking no resistance, until Toni found herself collapsing against the warm body below her. Her own body goes completely limp and she doesn’t fight it, exhaustion pulling on her limbs until they’re all deadweight. 

“Don’t fall asleep, my little love. We have… twenty-one minutes to get to class on time. Twenty-six if we’re feeling particularly brazen.”

She groans, pressing her cheek into the softness below her. She watches the head and shoulders of a few people walk by the car from her low vantage point as Cheryl runs one hand up and down her spine under the blanket, and the other pokes out at their necks to run her nails against her scalp. She shivers and her eyes droop. “God, Cheryl. That feels so good,” she groans, nestling in closer. Cheryl hums, pressing her lips to her hair over and over again. It makes her brain feel slow and sleepy and she grumbles her appreciation.

They’re interrupted by a rapid tap on the window. Toni can dimly make out Reggie’s face pressed to the glass with her single cracked eye, his thumbs up and a big, stupid grin on his face. Cheryl’s hand curls protectively over the ear Toni isn’t currently pressing to her chest. “Fuck off entirely, you drooling meathead!” 

“Baby, volume,” she says with a wince, feeling her mellow being severely harshed.

He does wander off after he gets their attention, and Cheryl huffs to herself in irritation. “He’s just bugging us because he thinks we’re fucking under here,” Toni offers.

“And that’s why he’s remedial. I would never fuck you in my freezing car like some kind of animal. I fuck you in my nice, warm bed, like a civilized person,” Cheryl scoffs.

Toni smirks. “Say ‘fuck’ again.”

“Fuck.”

She laughs, tickled. “Nice. Never is a long time.”

“I will probably not fuck you in my freezing car,” Cheryl says slowly, considering.

Toni nuzzles into her, mollified.

The car goes quiet, the only sounds their soft, billowing breaths and the whisper of Cheryl’s hands disturbing the blanket. Cheryl sighs, the hands on Toni’s back and neck pressing their bodies into each other harder. “I love feeling you like this. You feel delicious, my sweetest.”

Heat blooms in her chest and smolders. She wishes she wasn’t so tired and that they were anywhere but here.

“Do you want to talk about your session?” The query is soft but it grates like teeth grinding.

She grunts in response. Scratch that. Cheryl can stay here alone. 

“It doesn’t have to be now. Or at all. But if you want to, I’m all ears.”

They should. She should. Talk. But not now. Not with fifteen minutes on the ticking clock, not when they feel so _normal._ She just wants to enjoy it, before they go home and the walls of Thistlehouse close in on them again. “Later,” she says, and she doesn’t know if she’s lying yet. Cheryl accepts it easily, hand tugging gently at her hair to guide her head, tipping her lips towards her girlfriend’s so she can be kissed so sweetly it almost breaks her.

“Later,” Cheryl agrees, and it feels like a promise and a threat. “We’re going to be ok, TT. Things are already looking up. Julian is no more, and I am very close to catching the insidious villain infiltrating our home.”

Toni lifts her head to look her in the eyes, her stomach twisting even as a beacon of hope takes up residence in her heart. “You know it’s not me, right Cher? I wouldn’t-”

“Of course you wouldn’t, my heart. You would never be so cruel. It never even crossed my mind.” Tears well in her eyes and Cheryl pouts at her. “Why do you look so heartsick, my love?”

She just can’t stand it. “I just… I wouldn’t ever do that to you. Not on purpose.” It’s the truest thing she’s said all day; the thought of someone intentionally using Cheryl’s mental health against her - trying to break her down - it makes her absolutely sick. She’s angry, at herself, mostly, for assuming that Cheryl was moving that fucking doll herself this whole time. She’d dismissed it, in the face of all the other problems in Thistlehouse, and she hates that it was the thing that was affecting Cheryl the hardest and she didn’t even realize it.

She should have broken that stupid fucking puppet into a dozen pieces, burnt it, spread the ashes across the whole of the Blossom maple farm acreage. It had just seemed easier at the time to let it go. She finds herself doing that a lot, lately.

Her mouth opens, to beg forgiveness, to make excuses. How could she have known? After Cheryl used that stupid doll to press her into accepting Jason’s corpse into their home, is it so unforgivable that she would think Cheryl would just… keep doing it, for her own esoteric purposes? Is she a monster for accepting the simplest explanation as to how an inanimate object with a haunted heritage only a handful of people could possibly know about managed to move around their house, given three of the five occupants couldn’t even make it to the second floor?

It is and she is. Because here is Cheryl, swearing up and down she never suspected her for a second. Cheryl, looking up at her with such an aching softness that Toni’s lip quivers outside of her control and it doesn’t stop until Cheryl takes it between her own. 

“I’m so suh-sorry, Cheryl,” she hiccups, tears running into their joined mouths and making her pull away to spare the other girl the taste. Cheryl looks at her with concern written all over her face.

“Whatever for? Darling, you’re forgiven,” Cheryl assures her, pulling her back down to seal their mouths together. Toni pulls away first, again, this time because her nose is so clogged from crying that she can’t breathe. Pale hands smooth back her hairline. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so upset, TT. What did that diploma mill’d mountebank say to you?” 

She sucks her lips into her mouth. The reason for her discombobulation feels like less anything Burble said and more that she was making Toni pick up all those carefully compartmentalized feelings she’s been storing in the back of her mind one by one and then slapped them out of her hands to the floor where they broke open; now all her devils are released and swirling around inside her.

They’ve fallen into a pattern, the two of them. Lying won’t get them out of it. She’s tried.

The bell rings, dull and muffled inside the school building, outside their cocoon.

“We can skip,” Cheryl says, already reaching for her keys.

Toni shakes her head, reaching for the blanket to wipe her eyes and nose. Cheryl doesn’t even say anything about how gross she is, instead grasping the outside of her thighs to pull herself upright. “We can,” she repeats, her mouth pinched and fretful.

“No, we’re going. You can’t miss anymore school; Mr. Honey is just looking for an excuse. We’ll talk at home, promise.” It’s not a lie - for once she’s sure of that. The beacon burns a little brighter. She takes one deep breath and closes the door inside her chest. Necessary but temporary. Just for now. 

When she steps out of the car her legs are a little Bambi. Cheryl grabs her hips and pulls her between her knees beside the door, politely tugging her skirt back into place while Toni holds onto her shoulders to keep her balance. When she’s done she looks up to check in on Toni again, watching her face seriously as she absently squeezes the backs of her thighs. Toni has to swat her hands away and drag her out of the car because the feeling makes crawling back inside with her much more tempting.

When she’s standing in front of her, eyes soft and face softer, Toni pops up onto the balls of her feet and kisses her lovingly on her pale pink lips. “We’re gonna be ok, babe.” 

The beacon keeps her warm. It’s not a lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> u ever rite somethin sad and then some unplanned fluff sneaks in that flows organically as ur writin but then u spend three (3) whole ass days rereading it with ur hed on ur desk trying to decide if you leave it because it b that way sometime irl or delete it because tonal whiplash? anyway what I’m trying to say is that i am so in awe of anyone who will admit to their beta that they are writing riverdale fanfiction truly braver than the troops and if your beta will read and critique your riverdale fanfic hold on to them!!!!! because that is tru luv and it’s really real and also i left about 60% of it in because i like it when hot girls say fuck.
> 
> Justice for Toni’s personality 2020


End file.
